Duck Eggs-So Good for you!

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

I was thrilled to find still warm fresh duck eggs waiting for me this morning, with so many of my chickens sitting on eggs, we have not been getting that many in the house each day so it was pleasure to see that some of the momma ducks raising little ones are starting to lay again..

Even my confined hens are still getting fresh greens each day, with most getting a number of hours of free range time out in the yard, enjoying bugs and slugs and lots of flys! I personally love fried duck eggs, I think because the thicker whites, and the firmer yolks on the ducks are not “that” different from my free range chicken eggs.. I was shocked at how different the store got eggs were when I was home, I really like being able to have a fresh egg or two in the morning, normally I have two eggs, but I figure that one duck egg is around 30 percent more then a chicken egg so one duck egg seems to do the trick in regards to being very filling.

Qouted from
http://www.livestrong.com/article/537850-nutritional-value-of-muscovy-duck-eggs/
Calories, Fat and Cholesterol
Each duck egg has 130 calories, along with 9.6 grams total fat. Of that total fat amount, 2.6 grams come from saturated fat, which represents 13 percent of the recommended daily value, or DV, for saturated fat. A duck egg also contains about 620 milligrams cholesterol, or more than two days’ worth of cholesterol for the average person.
Vitamins
Duck eggs are high in vitamins A and E, as well as B-complex vitamins. Each egg provides 9 percent of the DV for vitamin A, the nutrient associated with strengthening the immune system and promoting strong eyesight. They also contribute 5 percent of the DV for vitamin E, another antioxidant vitamin that additionally protects your nerves and muscles. Each egg also provides 66 percent of the DV for vitamin B-12. People deficient in this nutrient are at risk of fatigue and mental confusion. The 14 percent DV for folate may be especially useful for pregnant women, because folate helps prevent birth defects.
Minerals
Each duck egg delivers 4 percent of the DV for the bone-strengthening mineral calcium. It also contains 15 percent each of the DVs for iron and phosphorus. People who don’t get enough iron risk becoming anemic, which includes symptoms such as fatigue, weakness and pale skin. Phosphorus works with calcium to promote skeletal and dental health. Duck eggs are also good sources of selenium, zinc and potassium

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A monday this and that post..

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

My first monday back on the farm in close to six weeks and I am loving it! The amazing new purple daylily’s that I was given in my Spring Plant swap with Deb are stunning! Love them!, the other’s are doing well and are lovely as well but o those lilys, they are pretty enough to just stand there and gaze for a moment or two..

I have the dryer full again this morning filled with clover blooms for winter tea, the new herb settings give a amazing product but it sure take alot longer to dry things then my older hotter ones do, and plan to make some herbal salve this afternoon, I also need to make a new batch of nettle vinager for bites and small cuts..

Girl tested the barbwire fencing yesterday an now has two lovely (not) six inch scrapes down her upper shoulder/back area, a spot that the flies can reach but she can’t, so I will be watching, cleaning and treating as required.. its very shallow and will no doubt heal quickly.. The cows grazed for at least five hours in the pasture with no issues, and then broke a gate I never have seen them even look at and they were out.. Do you konw what we now have the fence around the garden in three ways.. fence posts closer together for stength, then on the one side, green snow fencing (also good for climbing plants) to keep the chickens and ducks out, then on the other side is sheep fencing, to keep the sheep out, and now it has four strands of barbwire to keep the cows out, if at some point I need to run a hot line it will reach the offical “sheez” level!

We need rain! I am honestly surprised that the pasture is holding up as well as it is, but if we don’t get rain, I am going to have to lock down most of my pastures and consider feeding hay from the first cutting and only allow limited pasture access until we get more rain.. strangely the current weather has really! encourage certainly “problem” plants in the pastures and ditches, the two big ones being wild creepers (normally we see a few each year but this year there are at least 40 to 50 popping up all over the big pasture) and Wild Parsnip, its everywhere this year and we are doing a running battle with it and its one of the few things that DH reacts to, on the other hand the heat and lack of rain is effect wild pickings and harvesting in our local area just as much as its effecting my crops on the farm..

We took a little walk in the woods yesterday and even in the wild the berries are only half formed, or are not forming at all.. I would love to start watering and I will for a few very select things in the garden, but all my water storage extra are bone dry, we are down to the wells only..

On a personal front, I am currently working on a no wheat, greatly reduced grain diet, I have done the test for my feet on that big machine and gotten insoles for my shoes to help me put my weight correctly down on them, I having added in a few new vit (a different b12 with folate) and I am in the process of a learning curve on figuring out a way to add more idoine into my daily practise, I live inland enough that my land does not have it and history shows that without extra idoine in your diet in this neck of the woods, you can be looking at issues and yet, I am not keen at the moment to be eating from the sea, and have been getting closer to home fresh water fish more so..but that does not help in this way..

I don’t want to add more salt to the diet, I do use salt but don’t believe its enough.. open to thoughts on this one?

I read a interesting article in the online newspaper yesterday, DH spotted it, it was about the fact that rural peaple have poorer health then city folks, even though we are more active in terms of working on the farm etc, there were different reasons given but I am only going to talk about two that I felt applied directly to our own lifestyle.. Lack of enough vehicles, therefor being locked on the farm, this is a interesting one to me, Dh and I have been a one vehicle family most of the time out of our relationship, this didn’t matter much at all in the north, as you can walk pretty much anywhere you want to in yellowknife or Iqaluit.. it was certainly harder to get use to on the farm, but it was just the way it way.. then for one brief 8 months, we had two and I found myself, just popping off to go for coffee or a visit or to do this or that.. It was both a freedom that I had not had in a long time, normally it takes planning to do that.. but it also cost us on the bottom line, running two vehicles, two tanks for gas, two insurance payments add up and fast!

Still I will tell the truth, I found it very freeing and wish we had not done so, as once I had a taste of it, I really missed it when we went back to being a single vehicle family..

The second one of note was that they didn’t feel that folks in the rural area’s had as good of health care, again I found this interesting, I have lived in places were it was in fact hard to get health care, needing to do dental and eye care when you came home, paying for medical care in a different province because it needed be done etc..

But where I live now, I have all the paying for myself health care that I would want, its the paid for health care that I find lacking, I personally feel that compared to alberta, NWT and Nunvut, I current live in a Hospital desert, you need to drive a min of 45 min in any direction from me to get to a hospital, this is the only place in canada that I have ever had to do that.. and after being here for years and years, I still don’t have a doctor, I have a very excellent health nurse only..

If you live in a rural area, do you think you are lacking in your basic health requirements being meet?

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Pantry count update on July 2012

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, this is my cellar pantry count, does not include upstairs in use pantry items or what is in my freezers or what is on the hoof so to speak, just what is currently in my cellar in regards to canned foods..

Canning count July 2012

Meats-total 53
– Canned Ham- 23
– Canned Turkey- 10
-Canned Chicken -10
-Canned Salmon -4
-Lamb- 6 pints

Veggie- Total 177
-Pumpkin Pickled – 6
-Pickled Turnips – 6
-Corn- 10
– Beets- 18
– Tomato’s Products of all kinds-110
– Red Pepper Sauce- 3
– Green Pepper Sauce- 6
– Beans-18

Fruits Total 221
– Strawberry-2
-Rhubarb or Rhubarb mixed fruits-15
-Apricots-47
-Cherry-1
-Apple- 33
– Pear-8
-Peach-32
-Pinnapple-2
– Ginger- 7
-Blueberry- 25
– Watermelon- 3
-Plum- 8
-Grape -7
Chokecherry -1
Chokeberry- 2
Red Current -14
Wild Cranberry-6

Pickles and Relish’s Total 84
Red Relish- 5
Dilled Sliced-1
Brussel Sprout -1
English style -18
Bread and Butter-23
Dill Baby-10
Relish (different kinds)-26

Soups or Stews
Lamb soup -2

Extra’s
Carrot pudding -3
Canned milk -51
Herbed Jelly -3
Maple syrup- 3
Dandelion Honey-3

Homecanned left as of July 2012 =502 jars from 2010 to 2011

Posted in Life moves on daily | 23 Comments

Goat Stuffed Grape Leaves in a Red Pepper Sauce with Greek yogurt..

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/usda/grape-leaves

Even if you live in a place in canada that you can’t grow grapes themselves, unless you are really far north, you can most likely grow grape leaves, these are lovely in a number of dishes but I tend to stick to the main one of using them as a wrap, I find unlike a cabbage roll where the cabbage is itself part of the flavour of the dish, when it comes to grape leaves the middle and the sauce is the main flavour with just a hint of the grape leaf..

Add in the fact that I am working on removing wheat from my plate at this time and that means no bread, no wraps, no dough of any kind and suddenly being able to use my grape leaves as a wrapping becomes even more useful then normal!

Just to add to the wonderful news about grape leaves, they are only 3 calories each..

Goat Stuffed Grape Leaves in a Red Pepper Sauce with Greek yogurt..

1 pd of goat hamburger meat
1 med onion finely diced
1 clove garlic finely diced
1 can of sweet corn
Salt and Pepper to taste..

1 jar of sweet roast pepper sauce

40 to 50 fresh (or canned) grape leaves about the size of your hand..

A heaping tablespoon of extra thick greek yogurt, homemade or store got..

If you have fresh grapes, go pick ones just bigger then your hand, you want to still get the fresher lighter green leaves and you need to trim off the stem itself, wash and let them rest while you prepare the filling, cook your meat, onion and garlic together, then add your corn, saving your juice if you want.. turn off heat.. take one heaping tablespoon per leave, and place in middle, fold edges and roll and place in your shallow one row only baking pan, repeat till its full, I had a cup or so of the middle mix leftover, can be used as a excellent mix with eggs for a awesome breakfast omlet.

Then pour a 2 cup jar of sweet roasted red pepper sauce over them, I mixed in my corn juice to make it a touch less thick, this was my homemade version, perhaps a store got one for pasta would not require the thinning? Bake in a hot 375 oven for 20 or 25 min till the leaves are tender and it is smelling heavenly.. Serve 4 to 6 on each plate with a heaping spoon of yogurt

Leftovers can be reheated, and are just as good the next day! Enjoy..

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | 5 Comments

First of the garden count is in.. Currents, and Blueberries..

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, the first of the fruit count is in this year and it surely does reflect a different spring and what late frosts can do..

Red Currents- a mear 8 cups worth- $6 dollars worth locally..
No on farm black or white currents- $0 dollars
Wild Currents- Just as bad.. done and empty.. did they have some while I was gone or did the birds get them all?

Thankfully, I have a reasonable amounts of red current jelly, juice and about 4 pds still frozen in the freezer for the use in 2012, still I will be pruning, feeding and remulching the bushes this year, in the hopes that I get a much more typical crop in amounts next year.. given that I have 12 current bushes on the farm at the moment, that is one very poor crop indeed.

My blueberry on farm yield was even worse this year.. for a total of count it! Nine berries.. what is that $ .10 cents worth LOL
Thankfully, there does seem to be a very limited amount of wild blueberries available, but even they are very lean pickings, what should have clusters with good size berries, have only one or two and they are smaller and drier.

Thankfully, last year was a good blueberry year, and I still have a full case of 12 blueberry fruit, 8 jars of blueberry pie filling, 4 jars of blueberry juice, and 12 pds of frozen berries in the big freezer yet..

On the flip side, my elderberry bushes are so loaded with started fruit that I will need to either trim off clusters or prop up branches and I had a look at my chokeberries and they are loaded to the hilt, as are the grapes and the high bush cranberries.. hmmm we will see if they turn out in the end, I certianly hope so..

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Working with girl- New gear and hauling ditch hay-bedding..

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, decided that I wanted to get out and give Girl a run though to see just how much back sliding we had done since I have not worked with her for a good solid six weeks..

Somethings were fine, others not so much, plus I threw some new things at her..

So tied her up and gave her a nice brush down and checked her feet, did a little work, this went well, put her new (old)brichen on her that I got as a pair at that last sale for 5 dollars, its old and needs a good cleaning and for sure some leather oil but all in all does the job just fine, attached that to her front pad an we were set to give that a whirl.. that part went very well on the road, she was able to do “walk on” gee, haw, easy, and whoa, as well as stand and back with no issues.. good Girl!

then we moved on to hauling hay, didn’t go quite as well, with the new set up, the tie places meant that when she shifted the load, I got to see that done wrongly, that it becomes a bucking strap. poor girl, and she would not settle down enough for me to move it or shift the load, needless to say that was not fun and she stepped on my foot to boot! Thankfully, she was still with it enough to back when I said it sharply..

Finally got her settled, calmed and we redid the load so that didn’t happen again.. and then we hit the biggest snag of the day.. you see when we are on the road, she still understood that it was work time but as for the past weeks she has been walked up and down in her head gear and lead rope and then put out to graze, which meant that as soon as we started down the lane, she thought she could just head off and go eat, instead of staying in work mode.. and this became a running battle between her wanting to graze and me wanting her to stay in work mode..

Needless to say, I was doing my best to have things end on a high note, so we finished working back on the road, where her mind was on us and work instead of grazing, but I can see that I have some daily work ahead of me to get this bad habit removed! otherwise, I will have to order and put a basket on her so she can’t graze while working..sigh..

When she was little, I would often do the back lean in a stand an we worked to the point that this could go on for a few min but now that she is tall enough, I can’t do this anymore, so I had to get Dh to do the back lean and weight, she did great so today we took the next step in teaching her how to be riden and DH was not to happy about jumping up on her back and over while balancing with his feet a good foot plus off the ground, on the other hand, Girl was perfect, it didn’t even faze her.. Awesome!!

So the plan this week, go back to working with her to head up when in gear (no grazing) working on teaching her to spin on command(trick training) working her back with long leads both for riding training and also for training in her gear and brichen with her tie behind her pulling a tire..

Here’s to a good and productive week with my cow..

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Bright Eyes Aka the Baby Turtle, giving the best grump face ever!

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Critters, Life moves on daily | Tagged | 3 Comments

My biggest Huh when I arrived home..

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Hello Everyone..

Wow did that last week of my time out west get busy, sorry for not answering emails or getting anything up on the blog, this daughter, sister, aunty and cousin was takening time off from the online world to make lovely memories in real time 🙂

After a long (rumbling, that was some awesome rocking on the plane) flight home I took my first day to get settled and to adjust to the heat (ah) and I am slowly making my way across the farm checking on so many things, and as I did a ton of posts came into my head, I love that my farm does that for me.. for example, my elderberries are so loaded that I will need to help the branches or they will break under the weight, which is why hubby should have taken more of the flowers off to dry..

I was surprised (and not in a good way) to see the effects of limited rain and overwhelming heat is doing to my garden, we have good looking crops on many staples but not so good on a number of my “extra’s”..

Now on to what I really want to talk about today and that is sometimes the books are all wrong..and life will find a way..

Let me explain that a little bit.. in every single composting book I own, they talk about fowl, pig, sheep and cow manure all needing at least one full year to compost down enough that they won’t be “hot” to the point of killing plants, and that things won’t grow in straight compost piles and that has been my personal view, when we do our big high piles, the steam rises, the piles heat up to the point, nothing grows and the first year, its just a big ol compost pile..

However last year we did something a little different, when we cleaned out the big barn, I decided that we would put the deep pack cleaning into “no mans land” and we would do it in long rows of about 30 feet long and about 3 feet or so high, it make a space about 30 by 60 feet or so of this rolling compost pile, well, it had sat out for the winter and didn’t seem to have done much at all over the winter and spring, which didn’t suprise me to much as I figured it would not compost at the same rate because of the way we made it.

What I was not Expecting! at all was that over 40 plus tomato plants would self-seed after passing though my piggies, and that by the first week of july, we would need to be staking tomato plants that are already in bloom and in at least a few case have small green tomato’s on them.. they are in the sheep pasture area, and they have not been touched, I would not trust the cow or the pigs to leave them alone if given a chance but they are self-sown and thriving in straight hot compost.. I’m doing a Huh here..

First, plants should not be growing in staight compost, never mind the hot factor
Second, tomato seeds can live though a pigs system? or did they end up in the bedding?
Third, everything I have ever read says that tomato plants that are allowed to self-start in our area would not produce and set fruit in time for harvest (that is why we all early start in the house or the greenhouse?)
Fourth, how is it possable that self-sown, never watered, in the middle of a black bare compost pile are out flowering my carefully done garden ones that have weeks of lead time on them?
Fifth-? I can’t help but be interested to see which one or ones of my hertiage tomato plants did this?

Welcome the extra crop that’s coming, will keep you posted..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 15 Comments

My love of books is a family thing..

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

In the bedroom I am staying in at mom’s there is a whole wall in bookcases, a good reading chair in the corner with a spot of tea pot, and the bookshelves are full to bursting.. This was the pile that caught my eye and I am slowly making my though them.. so its my current reading list at the moment..

On the top of that pile is a little book published in 1970 that my mom picked up for me, called Wilderness and plenty by Frank Fraser Darling..

 Let me just say that what was known then, is alot of what is known now, and things have not changed that much.. Still it was very interesting to see how many of the same issues where being brought to light in the year of 1970 are in fact a reflection of what we are seeing and hearing about in 2012..

Let me leave you with a final qoute from this book..

” There can be no greater moral obligation in the environmental field then to ease out the living space and replace dereliction by beauty. Most peaple will nver know true wilderness although its existence will not be a matter of indifference to them. The near landscape is valuable and loveable because of its nearness, not something to be disregarded and shrugged off; It is where children are reared and what they take away in their minds to own long future. What ground could be more hallowed?”

What are you currently reading at the moment? and have any of my older readers ever read this book, or would you share what book you read in the 60’s/70’s that had a impact on your thoughts on the world etc?

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Neither here nor there.. but somewhere..

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

When I was a child, my momma used to call me her “fay” child, always one foot planted on the ground and one foot into that world that only I seemed able to see..

When I was a teenager, my momma used to call me a “Day Dreamer” with one foot in the here and now and one foot in the past or the future..

When I was in my 20’s my momma used to say that I was “finding my way” with one foot in the here and now and one foot flying as high as I could get it, always trying a new way, a new path and seeing how it fit me..

Now that I am coming in a close to my 30’s my momma “say’s I am walking the hard path”, that I have made a number of choices in my life that show that the “old ways” call me but that it means I have things harder them most modern folks choose to have, no cell phone, no dishwasher, no microwave, and the list goes on..

Well this past few weeks I have been feeling that same kind of many pulls but on a much smaller scale, one part of my mind is home on the farm with DH, trying to keep track of what has been planted, was the cow breed, how are the ducklings and the rabbits, how is the fruit crop, how is the rain, having a section of my mind at work on this each day is important, what those crops do will have a impact on how much time I need to put away different foods, what the on farm crops are producing effect how much wild forage I need to plan for to make up the difference..

One part is here with mom, playing nurse and keeping up on the housework, the laundry, the yard and her gardens, as well as being the mostly full time cook (but they do much more takeout then I am use to but while I am torn between take-out, the breaks from cooking is nice too) I have been blessed with family time, company time and been trying to find time to both spend with dad and also get time on the farm.

However there is a third thing that I find heavy in my thoughts and on my mind daily, and its the overview of the world itself, I am watching what is happening at the G20, what is happening in the Euro Crisis, I am watching what is happening weather wise right here in Canada, I am watching the reports on lost fruit crops, the reports of flooding river, of drought in other area’s, and I am having that info churn in my head.

I have to say that I can see such a differnce between sitting and listening to family, and friends talk about what is happening here in alberta in terms of work, home and growth, vs sitting and visiting with friends in ontario about work, home and growth, its like having one foot in ontario, and one foot in alberta.. while there is common ground, its not the same in the two province’s.. and Its stiking to me on this trip, I saw hints of it on the last two trips home but this one its night and day in a number of ways.

If there is one thing I have learned over the years, its that I don’t think I will ever be in just one place, or on just one path, I am always going to be a Neither here nor there.. but its ok, because I am always somewhere..

 

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